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©2003 Davidson College Archives | Davidson , NC 28035
| Phone: 704.894.2632 |
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Drury Lacy
(b. 1802 d. 1884) Reverend Drury Lacy was fifty-three years old when he was elected president of Davidson College in 1855. He had graduated from Hampden-Sydney College and Union Theological Seminary and had been the minister of several churches in New Bern and Raleigh, North Carolina. In his first year as president, he experienced a student revolt, during which most of the students left the college. That year's commencement had only three graduates. Fortunately, during Lacy's administration, the college received a bequest from North Carolina businessman Maxwell Chambers. With this bequest, Davidson suddenly became the richest college south of Princeton and in response, the college constructed Chambers Building, the largest and finest collegiate building in the southern states at the time. Alexander Jackson Davis, a notable architect from New York, was asked to design the original plans for the building.
In 1860 Lacy left Davidson to continue ministerial work and served as chaplain in the Forty-seventh Regiment, C.S.A. After the Civil War, he returned to Raleigh, North Carolina, where he and his wife, Mary Ritchie Rice Lacy, operated a female school, the Peace Institute. This school eventually became the present Peace College.
Author: Molly P. Gillespie & Mark Grotjohn
Date: 1998 & 29 June 2006
Cite as: Gillespie, Molly P. and Mark Grotjohn. "Drury Lacy " Davidson Encyclopedia, 29 June 2006 <http://library.davidson.edu/archives/ency/lacyd.asp>
Related Entries: Chambers Building, President's House, Presidents of Davidson College
Related Links: Civil War at Davidson, Davidson College Changed by Civil War, Lacy's Presidential Portrait
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©2003 Davidson College Archives | Davidson , NC 28035
| Phone: 704.894.2632 |
| |
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